Porsches at the Watkins Glen Six-hour Endurance Race

Story by Harry Kennison, Photos by Greg
Glassner and Richard Mitter

Vintage Corner is pleased to welcome a couple of contributing
photographers this month who have kindly submitted some images from
the 1969 and 1971 Watkins Glen Six-hour Endurance races. Back in the
late '60s and early '70s, Watkins Glen, nestled in the heart of the
Finger Lakes Region in upstate New York, hosted one of three
U.S. rounds in the World Championship for Sports Cars (Daytona and
Sebring, Florida being the other events). Fans attending the six-hour
race at the Glen actually got twice the racing for their money, as a
CanAm race was held on the same weekend.

I met Greg Glassner at last year's Fall Foliage Tour when he navigated
for PCA member Keith Welty in Keith's beautiful silver 2005 Boxster
S. In fact, the pair followed me for the whole event and we shared a
table at Basil's where we talked about the need for new material for
Vintage Corner. A few days later, Greg sent me a photo from one of
his visits to Watkins Glen in 1971.

The other photos from the 1969 Watkins Glen race are courtesy of my
old college roommate, Richard Mitter. He and I have been going to
races for 40 years now, but this six-hour race at the Glen was one he
attended and I couldn't make it. Although he'd never admit it,
Mitter is an accomplished motor-racing photographer, having been
published most recently in the British monthly publication Motor
Sport as well as in Pete Lyons' book CanAm Photo History.

We are always looking for old Porsche racing photos for Vintage
Corner, as it's not only a great way to share part of the Porsche
mystique with other club members, but it also helps me out as I'm
running out of old Porsche photographs! So dig through your old
photos and send them to me
at harry.kennison@comcast.net.
I'll be happy to turn them into a story for Vintage Corner.

Click on any photo to enlarge
it

Brian Redman in his Porsche 908-2 storms past the Tony DeLorenzo
Corvette, en route to an overall win at the 1969 six-hour race in which
he co-drove with Jo Siffert.